I loved this story because it showed me insights of the terrible existence of the prisoners at Auschwitz.
Iturbe details the food and lack thereof, the clothing and lack thereof, the beds and lack thereof. But also he showed how they managed to survive on their own terms in some ways. Knowing that this young adult historical fiction is based on the life of a survivor of Auschwitz made reading it all the more compelling and often eye-opening.
The main character, 14-year-old Dita, is both endearing and strong thus becoming the perfect navigator through the harsh details of life in an internment camp. I highly recommend reading this story.
Fourteen-year-old Dita is one of the many imprisoned by the Nazis at Auschwitz. Taken, along with her mother and father, from the Terezin ghetto in Prague, Dita is adjusting to the constant terror that is life in the camp. When Jewish leader Freddy Hirsch asks Dita to take charge of the eight precious volumes the prisoners have managed to sneak past the guards, she agrees. And so Dita becomes the librarian of Auschwitz.
Out of one of the darkest chapters of human history comes this extraordinary story of courage and hope.
When I started writing The Majesties, I wanted the narrative to be a continual excavation of secrets, one after the other. This sort of multi-layered story has always intrigued me and my fascination with it has influenced all my written work so far. I am particularly fascinated by books where characters unconsciously keep secrets from themselves, and where the line between the “real” and the fantastic is blurred beyond recognition. Sometimes it’s not just about solving a mystery, but articulating its mysteriousness—giving it flesh and bone, stitching its parts together, and bringing it to life through words.
This haunting collection of short stories left a faint chill in my bones for weeks—very aptly, given its name. None of the seven tales are conclusive, or wrapped up neatly. It feels as if there is always a kernel inside each one that remains tucked out of sight, no matter how many outer layers are peeled off—or in the case of one of the stories, no matter how much hide is flayed away.
Visual and performance artist, and winner of the inaugural Kill Your Darlings Manuscript Award, SJ Norman turns their hand to fiction with spectacular results. Permafrost explores the shifting spaces of desire, loss and longing. Inverting and queering the gothic and romantic traditions, each story represents a different take on the concept of a haunting or the haunted. Though it ranges across themes and locations – from small-town Australia to Hokkaido to rural England – this collection is united by the power of the narratorial voice, with its auto-fictional resonances, dark wit and swagger. Whether recounting the confusion of a child…
Like many people, I have experienced my share of suffering. I have also spent a lifetime exploring the suffering of others through great works of literature and art. My attraction to Japanese literature–imbued with a Buddhist sensitivity to loss–reflects my taste for the melancholy beauty of works of art that transmute suffering into aesthetic form. The qualities I find in Japanese literature are in wonderfully long supply in writings from around the world. My list of favorite books is a small testament to that aesthetic work which has the potential to heal us.
Reading these messages in a bottle discovered buried under a Nazi concentration camp in 1945, I am staggered and amazed at the indomitable human capacity for resilience and creativity.
I read these harrowing literary masterworks, which report on the most hellish degradations, and I am stunned that Zalmen Gradowski, from deep within his suffering, could wrest from the horrors before him and from his own despair, a literary art that is beautiful and solacing. I am reminded of the human capacity, which we all must certainly share, to snatch shreds of beauty from the darkest of circumstances and of the human hope that somewhere beyond one’s own hell lives a sympathetic ear.
A unique and haunting first-person Holocaust account by Zalmen Gradowski, a Sonderkommando prisoner killed in Auschwitz.
On October 7, 1944, a group of Jewish prisoners in Auschwitz obtained explosives and rebelled against their Nazi murderers. It was a desperate uprising that was defeated by the end of the day. More than four hundred prisoners were killed. Filling a gap in history, The Last Consolation Vanished is the first complete English translation and critical edition of one prisoner's powerful account of life and death in Auschwitz, written in Yiddish and buried in the ashes near Crematorium III.
The Periodic Table is by Primo
Levi, a chemist and one of the few thousand Italian Jews who were not
successfully hidden during World War II. If you are curious about the pre-war
culture of the Italkim (Italian Jews), this book is a window into a beautifully
rendered lost world.
Primo Levi was ultimately
imprisoned in Auschwitz, where he was sort of adopted by an illiterate Italian
peasant who was swept up in the forced labor sweeps. The two of them were
liberated and walked back to Italy together after the war.
What makes this book extraordinary
is the way Primo Levi teaches you a little chemistry with every chapter, as he
keeps his own sanity by finding a scientific worldview that is out of reach of
the brutality of the concentration camps.
An extraordinary kind of autobiography in which each of the 21 chapters takes its title and its starting-point from one of the elements in the periodic table. Mingling fact and fiction, science and personal record, history and anecdote, Levi uses his training as an industrial chemist and the terrible years he spent as a prisoner in Auschwitz to illuminate the human condition. Yet this exquisitely lucid text is also humourous and even witty in a way possible only to one who has looked into the abyss.
When I learned, at seventeen, of my father’s Jewish heritage, I flung myself headlong into reading about Judaism. Naturally, this led me to the Holocaust and World War II, and my novels are inspired by family stories from this harrowing time. While doing research, I traveled to Germany and London, interviewed WWII veterans, and read countless memoirs, academic nonfiction tomes, and historical fiction books about this era. I now speak at libraries and to community organizations about the Ritchie Boys, Secret Heros of WWII. People sometimes tell me concentration camp stories are too disturbing, so I recommend books about Jewish survival, heroism, and everyday life during the Third Reich.
Sigrid, the protagonist, satisfied my strong craving for complex characters. I loved this suspenseful novel for its interesting characters and the great writing style that reflected the heroine’s personality. The romance didn’t hurt either.
Sigrid seems a typical German housewife, struggling to make ends meet during the war while her husband is on the Eastern Front. Living with her distasteful mother-in-law, her one luxury is going to the movies. On the balcony of the cinema, her life changes, and Sigrid finds passion, romance, bravery, and purpose in her life. I couldn’t put this book down and was sorry to leave Sigrid when it ended.
Whom do you trust, whom do you love, and who can be saved? A gripping tale of Berlin in the Second World War, from the author of Annelies.
It is 1943—the height of the Second World War. With the men away at the front, Berlin has become a city of women.
On the surface, Sigrid Schröder is the model German soldier's wife: She goes to work every day, does as much with her rations as she can, and dutifully cares for her meddling mother-in-law, all the while ignoring the horrific immoralities of the regime.
I've written books about Jewish subjects before. A few years ago I published a biography about a Jewish Dutch actress named Jetta Goudal who invented a new life story for herself and became a Hollywoodstar. Before that I wrote a book about my Jewish great-grandfather Emanuel Brouwer who traveled to London in 1908 to compete in the Olympics. He traveled to the UK by boat with his best friend Isidore Goudeket, who was murdered in a German deathcamp. My great-grandfather did not win a medal in Londen (63rd place!), but he had a lot of fun in London, with loads of beer, whisky, and cigars. In 1943 he was sent to a camp as well.
Another book about a Jewish man who led a life that reads like fiction.
Louis Bannet grew up in Rotterdam with an alcoholic father and no money. He became a child prodigy at the violin, but decided in the Twenties and Thirties that he wanted to be the next Louis Armstrong. He became a star in Europe, but was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1943. He was recognized by a SS-guard and he was forced to be the leader of the campband in Auschwitz-Birkenau.
The trumpet saved his life and ‘The Dutch Louis Armstrong’, as he was known by that time, traveled from subcamp to subcamp. He even played in the villa of Dr. Josef Mengele, the so-called Angel of Death.
Jazz Survivor tells the story of Louis Bannet, the Dutch Louis Armstrong. Louis Bannet was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau during the was, but his skill as a musician saved his life: he became the 'star' of the Auschwitz Orchestra, as well as the personal bandleader for Dr Josef Mengele and the founder of the Gypsy Camp Orchestra.
I have always known that my parents survived the Holocaust. I often listened in when they, my aunt, uncle, and their survivor friends would sit and talk of their lives during the Holocaust. I am the past president for the Phoenix Holocaust Survivor’s Association (now called the Phoenix Holocaust Association) and am on its Board and the Chair of its Education Committee. During this year of Covid, I have been instrumental in hosting numerous writers from around the world who have spoken, in Zoom, about their Holocaust writings and research.
No one can truly know what life was like for Jews under the Nazis. We cannot feel the constant terror and inhumanity imposed upon their Jewish victims. We cannot hear their constant pleas, moans, and screams. We cannot smell the stench of filth, sickness, and death. Nevertheless, Joseph Gershowitz manages to take us as close as we can to his suffering in his absolutely riveting first-hand account of life in the Nazi’s concentration camps. On the Borderline of Extermination is a must-read for understanding the cruelty, barbarism, and inhumanity of the Germans and their all too willing helpers.
A true story of strategy and survival as told by Joseph Gershkowitz (AUSCHWITZ HÄFTLING 99310). With this inspiring story of innate knowledge and determination, Mr. Gershkowitz paints a vivid picture of the atrocities of the Holocaust as seen through his eyes. With that, 100% of the proceeds will be split and donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in tribute of Joseph Gershkowitz to ensure the memory of the Holocaust is never forgotten & the Women for Women International organization that works to support marginalized women in countries that have been severely affected by conflict and war.
Susan Tate Ankeny left a career in teaching to write the story of her father’s escape from Nazi-occupied France. In 2011, after being led on his path through France by the same Resistance fighters who guided him in 1944, she felt inspired to tell the story of these brave French patriots, especially the 17-year-old- girl who risked her own life to save her father’s. Susan is a member of the 8th Air Force Historical Society, the Air Force Escape and Evasion Society, and the Association des Sauveteurs d’Aviateurs Alliés.
This fascinating book follows 230 women, some more in-depth than others, who were imprisoned outside Paris for crimes of resistance activities. I began reading it as research and became captivated by the stories, especially the devotion the women developed for one another. I felt a deep connection to each of the prisoners as I climbed into their shoes, cheering for them to survive while fearing they would not. (The Appendix lists the 49 who survived if you want to know in advance. I didn’t.) It’s difficult to grasp what they endured over an unimaginable period of time. Just the sheer depth of their hunger is something I’ve never come close to experiencing. Moorehead keeps the tone intimate and compassionate. Yes, their suffering could be hard to read, but at the same time, I found inspiration as if they spoke to me from the past of the power of mutual dependency-…
A moving and extraordinary book about courage and survival, friendship and endurance - a portrait of ordinary women who faced the horror of the holocaust together.
On an icy morning in Paris in January 1943, a group of 230 French women resisters were rounded up from the Gestapo detention camps and sent on a train to Auschwitz - the only train, in the four years of German occupation, to take women of the resistance to a death camp. Of the group, only 49 survivors would return to France.
Here is the story of these women - told for the first…
Did you know that boxing is the number one fitness trend in America, outpacing spinning and yoga? It’s a workout that engages the mind and the body, incorporating strength training, cardio, and reflexes. But why is this good for children? Self-confidence! Self-discipline! Healthy lifestyle! The value of hard work! Meeting people who are different from you. All three of my children have gravitated to boxing. My son started at age 8 and continues to train as a college student. My middle daughter trained for the Golden Gloves as her COVID-19 pandemic focus. My oldest daughter has recently found her way into boxing after graduating from Rhode Island College of Design.
This is a Holocaust story that no one knows about.
This graphic novel is a brutal depiction of his father’s survival through boxing in a Nazi concentration camp and his life that followed as an immigrant to the United States. This Holocaust story of how his father’s boxing skills kept him alive in Auschwitz is part of a larger story of boxers who were rounded up and forced into a perverted form of the sport for the entertainment of the Nazis.
Poland,1941. Sixteen-year-old Hertzko Haft is sent to Auschwitz. Separated from his family and his fiancee, he draws a will to survive from the thought of seeing them again. His ability to survive, though, comes from something else - a unique talent. When Haft is forced to fight against other inmates for the amusement of the SS officers, he knows the price of a loss. But his extraordinary physicality and skill make Haft a formidable boxer, and he manages to escape death. As the Soviet Army advances in April 1945, he manages to escape the Nazis as well. After the war,…
I was a foreign correspondent seven time zones from home when my father died of a sudden heart attack. My grief mixed with guilt for never having sat down with him to unravel his vague vignettes about life and loss in the Holocaust. I wondered, how did he survive when so many perished? How much depended on resilience, smarts, or dumb luck? As reporters do, I started digging. I uncovered a Nazi paper trial that tracked his life from home, through ghettos, slave labor, concentration camps, death marches, and more. The tattered documents revealed a man very different from the quiet, quintessential Type-B Dad I knew…or thought I knew.
An indelible scene: Several Auschwitz prisoners clear rubble from a dark, bombed-out basement. It’s a blisteringly hot August 1944. There is no drinkable water, none. While “hunger exhausts, thirst enrages.” Primo Levi spots a section of broken pipe against a far wall with a spigot near the floor. It holds perhaps a quart of water. He can easily drink it all himself. Or should he share with his best mate? Or with the entire work crew? (Read the book to find out.)
No one writes of the dilemmas of survival more cogently than Primo Levi. A chemist by training, Levi melds a scientist’s precision with spare, insightful writing to show how the prisoner pecking order in Auschwitz meant the difference between death and survival, between the drowned and the saved.
In his final book before his death, Primo Levi returns once more to his time at Auschwitz in a moving meditation on memory, resiliency, and the struggle to comprehend unimaginable tragedy.
Drawing on history, philosophy, and his own personal experiences, Levi asks if we have already begun to forget about the Holocaust. His last book before his death, Levi returns to the subject that would define his reputation as a writer and a witness.
Levi breaks his book into eight essays, ranging from topics like the unreliability of memory to how violence twists both the victim and the victimizer. He…
